A Novel Experiment in Poetry

THERE could hardly be a more curious expression of the modern scientific spirit than is afforded by the preface of Mr. Shaler’s recent work.¹

In youth he has, he admits, loved poetry and written verses. Thereafter he has been more and more completely diverted from such addictions by enthusiasm for scientific studies. Shakespeare has long since become tedious to him, and he “ has not willingly visited a theatre for forty years.” Nevertheless, he believes that his imagination has continued to ripen by exercise upon scientific themes. He believes that a scientist’s progressive indifference to literature (he naturally cites the case of Darwin) is due not to loss of faculty, but simply to preoccupation. This belief, which the lay intelligence might be willing to let stand as a conviction, Mr. Shaler has wished to put to the proof, for his own satisfaction. Coming to the conclusion (with the advice, as he says, of “ those well-informed in the matter ”) that the Elizabethan dramatic form would be best for his purpose, he has produced the present “ romance.” After some experimenting with prose “ the writing began to take shape as heroic verse, which at once proved to be an easier and more sustaining mode of expression than prose.” At this point we come to one of the most interesting details of the transaction. The romance was written at odd intervals, but “ it soon became evident that the composition was, in a way, continued from day to day in the region below the plane of consciousness, appearing only when attention was directed to it.”

This is a sound doctrine of literary composition, and has, no doubt, a true analogy in the processes by which important advances in science are made. But it is not quite clear that Mr. Shaler’s long exercise of the scientific imagination has directly affected his present exercise of the poetic imagination. Despite the reliable assurance that the author has made little conscious preparation for the work, by way either of special research or of practice in writing blank verse, one cannot take the product as that of a literary novice. Mr. Shaler’s instinct for poetic expression was early aroused, and has been developed by a perfectly normal, though sub-conscious or “ subliminal” process. His knowledge of life, his general efficiency, have been increased by experience, and his sense of literary form has been singularly tenacious. From these unusual conditions we cannot be surprised that an unusual product has emerged. That absorbed application to scientific study need not prevent the partial development of a preëxistent literary faculty is abundantly proved by this experiment.

We say “ partial development,” because it is evident that Mr. Shaler’s natural faculty for poetic expression might have been further developed by conscious and continued effort. In structure it is evident that this study does not proceed from the hand of a writer practiced in dramatic composition. The parts of the romance, though they are given the five-act form, cannot be called in any strict sense plays. They lack the compactness of dialogue, the rapidity of action, and, what is more important, the organic structure, of real drama. Mr. Shaler has, he tells us, omitted something like one third of his material as it stood in the original manuscript. What remains might still, under the influence of a controlled as well as spontaneous creative faculty, be advantageously subjected to further compression. Much of his poetic matter is yet in solution, and would be greatly more effective if, by that right touch which only experience can confer, it had been fairly precipitated. But the experimenter does not profess to be an accomplished poet, and is right in supposing that his work possesses, though not a supreme, a genuine poetic quality.

The fourth part, The Death of Essex, most nearly approximates the form and the substance of a veritable drama. It has greater unity of action, and a more effective climax. Its verse is more pregnant and stately : one might have said more studied, if the author had not assured us to the contrary. One finds it, indeed, not a little difficult to read a speech like this of Elizabeth’s as the improvisation of a person unskilled in the poetic craft, unaware of any resemblance between his manner and that of the great period of English poetic drama : —

Of the lyrics with which the dialogue is interspersed it can only be said that they betray more readily than the blank verse that method of improvisation which the author has not hesitated to avow, even to insist upon. As a most interesting exercise in a somewhat irregular form of dramatic composition, this work can hardly fail to be read with attention ; and more than this its author does not ask of us.

H. W. B.